#896 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday April 9)
Good morning,
“It occurs to me that technology often brags about solving problems it created.”
-- John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021)
GUNS
The Supreme Court misread history in the Dobbs decision and did so again with the various cases expanding the right to bear arms. This court seems concerned with the words of the Constitution except when they want to bring in history. Then they bring in misreadings of history. And they’re against the effects of their decisions (saying they care only about readings of the law), yet said that to interpret the Thirteenth Amendment to exclude Trump from the ballot noted its practical ramifications, rather than opining solely on the statute. Here are thoughts on gun regulation…
Here is the text of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
I’ll leave it to you to try and argue away, as the Court has, that the concept of the right to bear arms was somehow to be connected with the furtherance of a militia. Plus, there is the concept of “well regulated” meaning that someone needed to regulate. But most notable is that it is difficult to imagine how this could be read, as the Court in Heller determined, that the Second Amendment’s purpose was to protect individuals’ ownership for self defense.
In his article, “The Justices Are Bad Historians,” in last month’s Wall Street Journal, Jack Rakove notes that lower courts after Heller had established a rule that addressed the right to self-defense was to be balanced by “a communal interest in collective security in public places or sensitive locations.” He goes on to note that the Court in last year’s New York Rifle Association v. Bruen expanded the prior finding in Heller which expanded the Amendment to include the right to bear arms in the home. Bruen says that the right is extended to say that one also had a right to bear arms in public places. Rakove notes that Justice Thomas’s majority opinion abandoned the earlier framework of balancing individual rights against public safety, instead providing that the government, in defending a restriction on gun ownership, had to establish that the law was “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.” Rakove states that “the court’s reasoning was circular: Whether a regulation was consistent with the country’s ‘historical tradition of firearm regulation’ seemed to depend not on the record established by historians but on whether it conformed to the court’s own recent rulings.”
The absurdity of Bruen, Rakove points out, “some of the historical examples that New York had offered in defense of its legislation were dismissed as being ‘too old’ while others were ‘too recent.’ Some ‘did not last long enough’ while others ‘applied to too few people.’”
I’ve studied and written about the facts surrounding the false narrative that individual gun ownership was prevalent in towns of the Old West and helped maintain the peace. The opposite in fact was true. Guns brought crime and lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson made sure citizens’ guns were surrendered upon entering town. The restriction of gun ownership—not the prevalence of gun ownership—is what won the West and ensured the peace and growth of cities.
But there are even earlier antecedents, which Rakove points out in his article: “Any scholar who reviews the history of firearms regulation in Anglo-American law has to wrestle with the Statute of Northampton of 1328. Here Parliament imposed rather strong limitations on the ability of Englishmen to carry arms in public places.” Thomas tries to distinguish this statute, arguing the arms at the time were knives, he ignores the enactment of Massachusetts and Tennessee laws enacted after the Second Amendment’s ratification. But never mind—these facts don’t support Thomas’s arguments and, therefore, are just not relevant.
THE DECLINE OF RELIGION
The decline of church attendance and affiliation in America is well-documented. Religious scholar Robert Engelhart has found that America is now the 12th least religious country on Earth. In 1990, the General Social Survey said less than 10% of all Americans had no affiliation. Today, it’s around 30%.
This is not merely an American problem but a worldwide problem (or, at least, exists in Western Europe and, in the case of Communist countries, has been government policy for decades). As I have written before, the decline in religious participation and identification has led to the deification of other “false gods” like political parties, overly jingoistic patriotism, and charismatic leaders with aspirations to authoritarianism. Grasping at these people and concepts (which Kurt Vonnegut called “granfalloons”) often leads to polarization, violence, and worse. In fact, Trump rallies now have the “feel” of orchestrated evangelical tent shows. He’s figured out that many people desire religion and he’s decided he is the one to do that.
EMPTY CHURCHES
I recall traveling in Italy when the kids were younger, when I was obsessed with Carravaggio. He was among the first to paint ordinary people—but also biblical stories and saints—as not beautiful exemplars of the perfect body. His subjects often had misshapen limbs and often were depicted as unkempt. In any event, I was on a “mission” to visit every Caravaggio I could find. Most of these are housed in churches. [Sidebar: Not only for the religious significance and ambience, churches offer some of the greatest art in the world in engineering marvels it seems nearly incomprehensible to believe were constructed as long ago as they were.] In any event, we visited church after church to see these masterpieces and wherever we went, we found them vacant—as if a filming of the zombie apocalypse or a post-neutron bomb movie were about to take place. Where were all the people? Curiously, often there wasn’t a clergy member or caretaker to be seen.
I’m not making an argument for religious observance. The argument, rather, is this is yet another place where being part of a community with each other is fraying. Churches provide a center for congregants to put the ideals preached from pulpits into action. Changing the world begins with collective action by people of conscience and character.
Have a great day,
Glenn